The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

by Jennifer Steil

  Shaima serves us bowls of Ramadan soup, which is made from coarsely ground wheat, milk, and onions. “High in fiber,” Nada tells me.

  I am already getting full. But there are still roasted vegetables with cheese, couscous and yogurt, and several breads. I keep protesting they are feeding me too much. Yet somehow, when Shaima brings out the crème caramel, I manage to squeeze it in.

  Desi interrogates me in a friendly fashion. He’s very interested to hear everything about my life and work. I’m curious about him, because of the other woman. He makes us Italian coffee after dinner, and he and Nada compete to see whose coffee I like better—Nada’s Yemeni or his Italian. I pick Nada’s in solidarity.

  After dinner, he heads to work teaching English. The rest of us have just retired to the living room when all of the power goes off. This happens every day during Ramadan, often for hours at a time. Nada is on her feet in a shot. “Ola will cry,” she says. “She hates this.”

  Sure enough, a second later we hear a wail from upstairs, where the girls are playing. I dig a flashlight out of my purse for Nada, who runs upstairs to fetch the girls. Once they join us, Mumina starts to dance. She is wearing a long, pink princess dress with spaghetti straps. Ola, who is wee at a mere one and a half, dances with her, making me want to kidnap them both for my own.

  I HAVEN’T BEEN in my new house for a week when I slip on my uneven stone stairs and crack two ribs. I am carrying my computer in my arms, and when I fall my only thought is protecting it. My ribs catch the edge of the stone step so hard that I cannot move for nearly half an hour. I lie sprawled between my kitchen and the second floor, stunned with pain, thinking that it might be a good idea to have a roommate. Someone to call the ambulance. Were there any ambulances. At last, I roll onto all fours and crawl up the stairs to bed. There’s nothing to be done about a rib anyway, even if it is broken. I take four ibuprofen and try to sleep on my left side.

  This puts an end to my swimming for several months. Every time I try—which, given my obsession with exercise, I often do—there is such searing pain in my ribs that I end up in tears. How on earth will I cope if I cannot swim to release stress? I walk to work every morning, but it is not enough to ease the strangling amount of tension that builds up in me each day.

  It doesn’t help that I’ve been suffering from a flulike Yemeni virus for more than two weeks. Al-Asaadi and I have been sneezing so much we finally conclude we’re allergic to each other. I’ve already had to make one trip to the hospital, and I am not keen to make another.

  I keep thinking that I should go out on my days off, or call someone, or try to meet new people, but I am just too tired and sick to do anything. Hope begins to desert me. I worry I will never be healthy, never be without pain, never get the newspaper on a schedule, never teach my reporters anything. Work is an unending struggle. Reporters are constantly missing, our Internet connection goes down every few minutes, and photographers refuse to show up when I need them.

  I want to believe that there has been some progress, that something good is coming of this. My standards for success have dropped dramatically. Give me just one grammatical headline. One issue closed before midnight. One day when my male reporters get to work on time. But I am still fighting simply to fill pages—forget trying to fill them with good reporting or decent writing. I still have no one to whom I can delegate any of my work and no one to cover for Luke over Christmas when he is gone for a month. Talha vanished from the office after I caught him plagiarizing an entire story from the IRIN news service and has not been seen since. Zuhra is out sick until after Eid al-Fitr, the festive holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan. Her doctor told her she has exhaustion and must rest. Whom can I turn to now to find stories at the last minute? Who will make me laugh when I am feeling cross? Who will walk me to the Jordanian sandwich shop? I miss my little shadow.

  Giving up isn’t an option. After all, I have no backup plan. But I feel so tapped out I just don’t know where to turn. Everything overwhelms me. I remember that Faris gets back from a trip to Washington the next day, and I decide to talk to him. Maybe he will know where I can find good reporters. The number of applications I get from people with master’s degrees in English who can barely write astonishes me. The résumés and cover letters are riddled with typos, malapropisms, and grammatical mistakes.

  I’ve just reached the nadir of my despair, however, when I have my best closing night yet. Al-Asaadi is away, so I pull the entire issue together myself, and my skeleton staff pulls through for me. Thilo, a German freelancer I hired in desperation without ever having read his writing, turns in a wonderful piece about antiquities smuggling. Hassan writes several news stories. Ibrahim sends front-page stories from his home office, and I realize I will have enough stories to fill the paper after all.

  I whip out my editorial in fifteen minutes and even enjoy the process. When no pressing issue is begging to be editorialized, I indulge my pet peeves. Tonight, it’s honking.

  Excessive, ear-ravaging honking of automobile horns is a pervasive problem in Sana’a, but perhaps never quite as terrible as it is during Ramadan. During the holy month of fasting, everyone in the city rushes home for iftar to break his or her fast at exactly the same time. The ensuing gridlock only aggravates the frustration of drivers, who turn to their horns to express their dissatisfaction with the situation.

  But these are futile gestures. Blaring horns are powerless to move heavy chunks of automobile. Making screeching noises that harm the ears of passengers, pedestrians, and bystanders alike will not make the cars in front of you move any faster. Nor will it make other drivers behave any more kindly toward you….

  Scores of medical studies have found that exposure to elevated noise such as loud horns causes a range of physical and psychological problems, including: hearing loss, high blood pressure, stress, heart problems, increased levels of aggression, as well as vasoconstriction, which can lead to erectile dysfunction. Before leaning on that horn, perhaps a man should think about what it could do to his reproductive capabilities.

  (This prompts an e-mail from my mother, who is concerned that perhaps attacking men’s reproductive capabilities isn’t a wise move on my part. “But, Mom,” I protest, “that’s a surefire way to get their attention.”)

  With much cajoling and limping up and down the stairs, I manage to squeeze all the photos I need out of the often-elusive Mas. He complains, but cheerfully. Noor surprises me by turning around a quick story on Eid al-Fitr, which she reports and writes in one day. It is a miraculous night all around. Perhaps I do better when I am not relying on al-Asaadi to do anything for me. We finish laying out the last page of the night at two forty-five A.M.—our earliest Ramadan close ever! I am jubilant. Luke looks at me with suspicion. “You’re doing unusually well for three A.M.,” he says. “What kind of cold medicine are you taking?”

  I finish the last few captions and catch Farouq’s eye. “What?” he says, alarmed. “What do you need from me?”

  I smile and make a zero shape with my fingers. “Nothing.”

  Farouq raises his eyes and hands to the ceiling. “Al-hamdulillah!” he whispers thankfully. Praise belongs to Allah.

  My neighborhood is silent as I unlock my gate and tiptoe through my courtyard, a slip of moon lighting my way. A cat darts across my feet and disappears under the water tank. I wonder if anyone is watching me, wondering at the hours I keep. I climb the stairs, shed my shoes, and turn the lights on in my kitchen. Boxes of tea and cereal line my counter, next to an enormous bowl of oranges, apples, and grapes. I flick the switch on my electric teakettle and pad upstairs (slowly!) to change into my pajamas. Ten minutes later I am curled in my bed, a cup of mint tea by my side and a history of Islam in my hands. I am home.

  AS SUDDENLY AS IT BEGAN, Ramadan is over. During the last few days, traffic comes to a complete standstill, as everyone in the city is out every night shopping to prepare for Eid. Old Sana’a is thronged with five times the average number of people, and the ma
rkets stay open until nearly dawn.

  I have never been so happy to see a holiday. For the first time, I have more than one day off in a row! For the first time in nearly two months, a piece of unscheduled time! My first morning off I sleep and sleep. Eid has quite literally saved my life. It makes me feel so festive it’s like Easter and Christmas all rolled into one. The little girls tear around the streets dirtying brand-new princess dresses, men fit themselves out with upgraded jambiyas, and women bake sweet cakes to feed visiting family and friends in preparation for these four days of celebration. Every single one of my journal entries during this time begins with “Eid is the best holiday ever!”

  Now I finally have time to enjoy my new home. Solitude is a luxury after long days with my staff. I like the freedom to read over dinner. I like to take my clothes off and dance around my rooms to Fountains of Wayne and XTC. I like to write in my journal in bed. I like sprawling in my mafraj with a chunk of dark chocolate and a pile of books and magazines. I still long for more companionship, but I trust that it will come.

  My Yemeni friends have trouble understanding why anyone would choose to live alone. For instance, when Shaima drives me to the supermarket one day, I tell her I need to find a little coffeemaker. I’m desperate for real coffee—I’ve been drinking the ubiquitous Nescafé since I moved here. But all I can find are giant, exorbitantly expensive family-size Mr. Coffee—type coffeemakers. Even I could not drink that much coffee. “No one lives alone here,” Shaima explains. “They all live in big families. No one needs a little coffeepot.” I hadn’t thought about this. It’s true; no one lives alone. Yemeni people live with their parents until they marry, and often married people stay in the same house as their parents. The concept of “alone time” does not exist. When I tell my Yemeni friends that I wish I had a bit more time to myself, they are baffled. “Why?” they say. “Why would you ever want to spend a minute alone?”

  ON THE FIRST MORNING of Eid, my elderly neighbor across the street, Mohammed, invites me over. He calls my home phone, waking me. I have no idea how he got my number, but he says he has seen me unlocking my gate, and won’t I come for an Eid visit? I have a friendly neighbor! So I dress quickly and run across the street. Everyone in the Old City is so kind to me that it never even occurs to me to be afraid of strangers. Mohammed ushers me through halls hung with oil paintings of landscapes to a mafraj done all in blue, with white lace draped across the cushions. Across the carpet are scattered several little silver tables covered with dishes of pistachios, raisins, pastries, and chocolates. Mohammed pushes one of these little tables in front of me and tells me to eat. I nibble on raisins and almonds while he calls for his wife and daughter. “I’ve been to Arizona,” he says. This is evidently a great source of pride.

  His wife, a rounded, wide-hipped, hook-nosed woman with an enormous smile, comes in and sits beside me. Their daughter sets a glass of lime juice in front of me and settles on the other side of her mother. She’s around twenty and rather plain. Both women, according to Mohammed, speak English but are too shy to speak it around me. Mohammed does most of the talking, telling me how much he loves America and Americans.

  “Do you like Kenny Rogers?” says Mohammed. “I love Kenny Rogers.” He gets up and puts on a cassette. Somehow I failed to imagine that an Eid celebration would involve suffering through “Coward of the County.” Whenever his wife leaves the room, he turns it up. When she returns, she turns it back down. Eventually, when the first side of the cassette ends, she gets up and replaces it with a tape of Yemeni oud music.

  “She likes this kind of music,” says Mohammed disapprovingly.

  “It’s pretty,” I say. “I like the oud.”

  They keep encouraging me to eat and ask me about my life. Mohammed hands me a large, illustrated book about Yemen and tells me all the places I have to visit.

  “You must go to Soqotra,” he says. “Or you have only half lived.”

  They ask if I have a husband and I lie. They ask if I have children and I tell the truth. “But maybe I would like some,” I say.

  This sends Mohammed’s wife into fits of laughter. “Maybe!” she says. “Maybe!” I wonder if she simply thinks it is ridiculous for someone as old as I am—I’ve gotten so much more white hair since I got here—to consider children or if it is funny that I am not sure.

  A similar scene repeats itself at Sami’s house later that day. Sweets are served, tea is poured, I am again forced to explain my childlessness, and my teeth ache with all of the sugar. But I am grateful. For the first time, I feel a sense of community. I belong to my neighborhood.

  EID ALSO BRINGS ME the gift of Anne-Christine. A German woman about my age who has worked in Sana’a for several years in hospital management, Anne-Christine is living in a small flat under my house when I move in. But when its tenant returns from Denmark in October, she finds herself suddenly homeless. I discover her in tears one night on my stairs. Though I hardly know her, I invite her to live with me. I have so much space, and she is so distressed.

  The arrangement works out marvelously for both of us. Anne-Christine is not only a vegetarian, and so shares my eating habits, but she is also a talented cook. She is happy to have someone to cook for, and I am ecstatic to eat something other than salad and bread, which is all I can ever muster the energy to throw together. For the entire two months she lives with me, Anne-Christine makes dinner every night. Even when she goes out to dinner with friends, she still cooks me an eggplant curry or stewed lentils and leaves the dish for me with a note. As if I couldn’t possibly manage to fend for myself.

  On nights that I fail to come home for dinner or am late because of work, Anne-Christine is distraught. “Oh, I just wish I knew when you would be home!” she says to me one night. Feeling a bit like a 1950s husband, I start to leave work earlier, so as not to upset her.

  Al-Asaadi finds this greatly amusing. “You have a wife!”

  “Yeah,” I say, shutting down my computer. “She’s the best thing ever. I can see why you guys would want four of them.”

  After she’s been living with me a few weeks, I cannot imagine how I ever survived before Anne-Christine. It makes such a difference to come home to someone. I’ve also begun to recognize that it is a matter of survival to have a few non-Yemeni friends to whom I can confess the whole of myself. This keeps me sane and keeps me from overconfiding in people who do not have the cultural context to understand some of the decisions I have made. I am still feeling my way toward the boundaries of what I can tell and what I need to keep secret.

  Anne-Christine is so integrated into the fabric of Yemen that she has a Yemeni lover, Yahya. I cannot hide my astonishment when she confesses that he is married. I wonder if she is risking her life with this relationship in a culture where adultery can be punishable by death. The night I meet Yahya for the first time, he’s terribly shy and worried that I will think poorly of him, though Anne-Christine reassures him that in Germany and the United States, it is perfectly normal for a man to visit a woman in her home. When he rings to say that he is on his way, she becomes giddy as a schoolgirl, running around the house fixing her hair and changing her dress. I’ve never seen down-to-earth Anne-Christine like this. Her face has flushed crimson, and she looks pretty and all of sixteen.

  Yahya is tall for a Yemeni, attractive, and very soft-spoken. He speaks English, though slowly. I speak too quickly for him, and Anne-Christine tells me to slow down. He seems kind and not at all the sort of man to take the risks he is taking. But people here, I am learning, are rarely what they seem.

  NOT ONLY DO I now have someone cooking for me and a few friends in whom I can confide, I also have what I consider the ultimate luxury: a cleaning woman. I’ve never had one before. No one but me has ever scrubbed my bathroom or washed my dishes. In New York, it was so expensive to hire someone to clean that I didn’t even know anyone who had a cleaning woman. But Shaima has insisted that I have someone. “I don’t know what we’d do without a housemaid,” she says. She se
nds me Aisha, a Somali woman desperate for work.

  Yemen is home to some 150,000 Somalis, most of whom have fled to Yemen to escape violence in their homeland. They are granted automatic refugee status in Yemen—as long as they can reach the country alive. Thousands of Somalis save their money to buy passage on tiny, overcrowded smugglers’ boats across the Gulf of Aden. Many don’t survive the journey. They are often victims of violence on the boat, and many of the smugglers transporting the Somalis dump them so far from Yemen’s shores that they drown. But Aisha has survived. She doesn’t speak a word of English, so I uncover her story gradually, as my Arabic improves. She lives in Sana’a with five children and a husband. A tall, heavy woman, Aisha wears a hijab but doesn’t cover her face. When she smiles, she reveals a mouthful of enormous teeth. At first I ask Aisha to come just once a week—I don’t make much of a mess given that I am rarely home. But she is so desperate for work that I relent and have her come twice a week. I pay her $10 per visit, which Shaima tells me is the going rate. This seems staggeringly little to me, but Aisha accepts it without complaint. She leaves my house gleaming, with the smell of bleach wafting up from my stone floors.

  After the first couple of weeks, I start to give her things to take home, usually food. I give her whole cakes, boxes of cookies, chocolates, and even some jewelry and clothes, mostly gifts I have received for which I have no need. A few weeks later, I give her the keys to my house. I trust her.

  DESPITE THE REST and nutritious meals, my ribs refuse to heal. I still cannot laugh without agony, so finally our photographer Mas takes me to the hospital for X-rays. I don’t know quite what the point is, because if they are cracked there is nothing I can do but rest. But it couldn’t hurt to see a doctor.

  We walk into an office in the emergency pavilion of the Yemeni-German Hospital, where three men sit idly shuffling papers. The one in the middle is apparently the doctor. I explain my problem, and he gives us a written order for an X-ray. We then find our way to Radiology, up and down stairs and through doorways. The technician ushers us right in and has me change into a hospital gown (even more modest than ours). I change in private, but during the actual X-ray, he allows Mas to stay in the room. Does the technician not know that he is exposing Mas to radiation? Or does he just not care? No one even asks me if I am pregnant. Do they know that pregnant women shouldn’t be X-rayed? Maybe they just think I look too old to be pregnant?